Monthly Archives: November 2018

Pouring money into a problem without fixing the underlying problem accomplishes the political task of surviving an election cycle. The people who voted for this nonsense are long gone and no longer held to account.

“Despite their general affluence, professional women of the Western world have been chronically unhappy for decades, and I conjecture that it is partly because they have been led to expect happiness from a mechanical work environment that doesn’t make men happy either.”

“I am wholeheartedly in favor of women students or employees knowing their rights and speaking up to defend them. However, the #MeToo movement has gone seriously off track in encouraging uncorroborated accusations dating from ten, twenty, or thirty years ago. No democracy can survive in such a paranoid climate of ambush and summary execution. This is Stalinism, a nadir of politics.”

“Simply put, we live in a populist moment when many of the gatekeepers have either abandoned their posts to join the mob or stand lonely vigil at gates that are no longer needed because the walls are crumbling. To borrow a phrase from Julien Benda’s landmark Treason of the Intellectuals, our age is marked by the “political organization of hatreds.” What McCarthy did with letters and telegrams, President Trump does with Twitter.”

“The “middle way” sounds moderate and un-radical. Its appeal is that it sounds unideological and freethinking. But philosophically the Third Way is not mere difference splitting; it is utopian and authoritarian. ” Liberal Fascism

It is a recurring lesson that most voters care less about policy than subjective perceptions. As big problems are addressed lesser problems become more pronounced. The difference between the right and the left is less about the substance of the policies than the weight allotted to them.

His combative tone is welcomed by his supporters and hated by the opposition. He is solidifying his base and turning his reluctant supporters into committed supporters, but Trump is less effective at getting new supporters.

“Being so focused on Washington, it is natural that the Democrats have allowed the atrophy of their political muscle in the states, leading to diminished power in them. At the same time, the people in the more rural states have not failed to appreciate that the Democrats’ Washington-first approach devalues them and their communities — precisely the problem that our constitutional order was designed to ameliorate.”

Trump is puzzling; his errant tone and behavior has energized his base and his opposition. I do not believe that he is racist or the next Hitler, but his thoughtless comments certainly gives fodder to those that require a demon to define themselves. The real question is how it impacts the independents. The uncivil mob behavior of the left concerns many of the independents more than the thoughtless comments of Trump.

“If you rationalize mob behavior every time you don’t get your way in the electoral process, you don’t care about the temperature. And if your first instinct is to play politics with tragedy for partisan gain, you are part of the problem.”

“The fact that America just keeps on trucking irrespective of the qualities or character of the man in the Oval Office ought to make us think rather less of the presidency and rather more of ourselves — and think better of our neighbors, our businesses, our public institutions, our civil society, and much else — including the citizens who do not share our political views.”